THE P RTAL
March 2018 Page 10
Thoughts on Newman
Newman on Clarity
A pungent , and thought provoking , piece by our Newman expert , The Revd Dr Stephen Morgan
Just very occasionally , the editor of this magazine suggests to me that I might have written an article in too elevated a register , “ Forgive me , but do remember that we try to write Daily Mirror speak .” He may , of course , be correct but since I don ’ t read Socialist Pamphlets , I wouldn ’ t know . In any event , it matters little , since he is the editor and so what he says , goes . He also reminds me fairly frequently – and in this case entirely fairly – that I am supposed to be writing “ Thoughts on Newman ” and so it would be a good idea to give more space to the blessèd man . Being an obedient sort , I thought I ’ d give it a go .
NEWMAN AND THE JOY OF LOVE : Cardinal says Cardinal would have loved it !
Speaking to a gathering of eggheads at Britain ’ s second-best University , an American Cardinal has claimed that an English Victorian Catholic Cardinal would have loved Pope Francis ’ s “ The Joy of Love ”. Blaise ( pronounced “ Blaze ”) Cupich ( pronounced “ Soupich ”), the Archbishop of Chicago speaking at a conference at St Edmund ’ s College , Cambridge in February , said that John Henry Newman – who died in 1890 – would have been cool with the idea of Holy Communion for the divorced and civilly-remarried if their consciences said they could .
He said it was clear – Cupich is big on “ clarity ”, which seems to mean not being able to see through to the heart of a moral issue – that Newman ’ s idea of conscience as the “ aboriginal voice of God ” meant that nobody , still less the Church , should have hard and fast rules about these things .
He called for an adult approach to moral issues – Cupich is big on being “ adult ”, which seems to mean never having to pay the consequences for your actions – saying that since it was God who spoke to the individual conscience , the Church should respect whatever decision an individual came to .
Modern times : modern Bible
We don ’ t know whether they had Sunday Schools in Omaha , Nebraska , the Cardinal ’ s hometown , but if they did , they must have been using a different Bible from the one the Victorian Brit Sky-Pilot had .
The Good Book Newman ’ s father gave him when he was a boy is now at thirty grand a year Downside School , near Bath , the top choice for posh Catholics who don ’ t want their kids to freeze to death in
North Yorkshire .
This Bible still has Exodus 20:12 , Deuteronomy 4:13 , Matthew 5:28 , 19:6 , 18 , 24 : 35 , Mark 10:19 , Luke 21:33 and 1 Corinthians 6 : 9-11 and 11:29 in it . If he ’ d only had a more up-to-date version , a clearer more adult one , Cupich seemed to be arguing , Newman would have backed the elephant-sized loop-hole that “ The Joy of Love ” ( that ’ s what top-Cambridge Latin swot and TV star , Prof Mary Beard says the title of Pope Francis ’ s 2016 letter Amoris Laetitia means ) has driven through the Catholic Church ’ s old-fashioned kill-joy ban on extra-marital nooky .
Newman says No-No
We asked our in-house self-proclaimed Newman expert , Dr Stephen Morgan , DPhil ( Oxon ), if Cardinal Cupich had got it right about Newman . Morgan said that the American Cardinal seemed to him to have misunderstood what Newman had meant by conscience or may even deliberately have quoted him out of context to make exactly the opposite point to the one Newman was making .
Even in Cambridge , Morgan said , that would have been obvious to the audience . Morgan said that there ’ s been quite a bit of that going on in the Catholic Church these days : even “ The Joy of Love ” does it when it quotes St Thomas Aquinas , the medieval Italian saint and theologian , who could give Friar Tuck a run for his money in the out-size habit stakes .
Newman actually believed that the conscience was a part of the intellect that was formed by the teachings of Jesus : even in those verses mysteriously missing from the modern Bible the Archbishop of Chicago seemed to be using . Newman didn ’ t think it was a private echo chamber where your imaginary friend tells you just what you want to hear .